


post-game

by smartlike



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:48:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smartlike/pseuds/smartlike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mindy isn't sure where in the Rom-Com she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	post-game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Agnes_Bean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agnes_Bean/gifts).



> Just a short treat - hope you enjoy!

Mindy gave Danny a key because she was in Haiti for months and she needed someone to be able to get in, just in case, but she doesn't think he's ever used it. So she's a little surprised when she gets home from the Knicks game to find him sprawled across her sofa, frowning at the ceiling. She assumes the empty bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him has something to do with it.

"Hi." Danny just grunts, so Mindy drops her coat on a chair and stands over him. She considers trying to get Danny to sit up and make room on the couch for about four seconds before sighing heavily and perching on the arm of the sofa. "You know that I shouldn't have to sit on the arm of my own sofa just because you're too drunk to move, right?"

Danny blinks up at her, scowls a little, and pushes one hand against the air like he thinks he's going to sit up before shrugging and letting his hand drop back to his chest. "Yes. I do know that." He shrugs again. "But there is nothing I can do to help you. No wait, that's a lie."

Mindy tips her head to the side and smiles despite the fact that it turns out the arm of her sofa isn't comfortable at all. "Now you're lying to me?"

"Yes." Danny nods his head in a way that is probably supposed to be very serious, but the effect is ruined when he closes his eyes mid-motion. "Oh, oh that did not feel good." Danny swallows thickly. "Did they teach us in medical school about this?"

"About the effects of alcohol on the human body? About the dizziness and the nausea you're experiencing right now?" Mindy presses her hand against Danny's knee when he starts to nod again. "Don't - you'll be sick and that rug is one of kind and I don't think it can be dry-cleaned." Danny stops moving his head. "Yes, Dr. Castellano, they definitely taught us about alcohol poisoning in med school. So stop nodding, try to keep it together, and get back to how you're lying to me."

"Yeah. I mean, no. I'm not lying to you - it's just that." Danny pauses, takes a gulp of air, mouth wide open and Mindy rolls her eyes a little, but her hand is still on his knee, so she rubs in a way that's hopefully soothing and not nauseating - you can't always tell with drunk people. Once Mindy threw up in the R train in the middle of the day when Gwen tried to give her a soothing pat on the back after four-too-many brunch margaritas. (They're a real thing. In Brooklyn, anyway.) "Wait, Mindy. Did the Knicks win?"

Mindy shakes her head. "No. But La-La was sitting courtside and she had these boots that I think I saw at Barney's but she had them in gold which had to be a custom order and I just feel like if they can make the gold boots for La La they may as well sell them to everyone, right?" Mindy probably couldn't pull off gold boots, but she'd like the chance to try. 

At one point in the second quarter, Cliff had gone off to speak to a client or get a pretzel or something, and Mindy had sort of tried to get La La's attention. Mindy was sitting almost-courtside and there was a five-to-ten percent chance that Amar'e Stoudemire remembered meeting her that time and La La used to just be a VJ before she married up, so it wasn't completely crazy that she and Mindy could maybe become friends. The kind of friends who share boots. But then Cliff had come back and they had gotten into what was not-exactly an argument about whether Cliff was going to go to dinner with Mindy's father when he was in town. They've only been together a few months and Mindy didn't think Cliff would even _want_ to meet him, and he's only here for one night and she's already got Danny to promise to go to a Shulman  & Associates dinner to introduce all the partners to her dad. So when that became a whole thing until halftime, she'd let the La La thing go.

Danny looks very serious, which is clearly not about the boots because at this point in their friendship (which is probably what they have, most of the time), Mindy assumes that Danny tunes out the minute she starts talking about shoes. She taps one finger against Danny's kneecap. "Danny, what were you going to tell me? Why are you here?"

His knee turns to the side a little, trapping two of Mindy's fingers between Danny's leg and the sofa. "I watched some of your movies." Mindy looks around- the tv isn't on and it doesn't look like anyone's watched anything. "No, no. Not like, tonight." Danny scrunches his eyes and looks very drunk and very young. Mindy smiles again, this time despite worrying that her trapped fingers are starting to lose feeling. "Mindy, at work. At the hospital - I watched some movies with Katherine what's-her-name and Kate Hudson and um, that other one? God, are they all named Kate?"

Mindy can't really imagine Danny watching _27 Dresses_ or _How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days_ of his own volition. "Was the TV broken? Why did you watch those movies?"

Danny waves away the question, dropping his hand to rest on his leg a few inches from Mindy's. "But they're all the same, right? I mean, it's why you like them and I hate them - they're always the same. The girl goes through trials and trib-trilub-triblati--. Stuff. She goes through all this stuff and then gets rewarded with her true love. That's what you like."

It's not a question, but Mindy nods.

"Right!" Danny's voice is a little louder now and his pupils seem impossibly large. "And some of that stuff is the wrong guy. They date the wrong guy first." Mindy nods because this is generally true. It's usually the guy played by the slightly-less-famous actor or, sometimes like Hugh Grant in _Bridget Jones_ the more famous actor playing against type, but Mindy kind of hates that because, really, who wants to sit around and watch someone not fall for Hugh Grant?

"Mindy," Danny is apparently one of those people who says your name a lot when he's wasted. He manages to push himself up a little bit from the sofa so he can stare at her very intently. "Cliff is the _wrong_ guy. He's just walking around in your life with perfect hair, and the nice suit, and the- the- the- _almost courtside Knicks tickets_ , but he's the _beginning_ of the movie guy. You're not at the end yet."

Danny looks like he's just solved the most difficult proof in first year Organic Chemistry and Mindy isn't sure what to say to this declaration, but then Danny sits up and starts to lean toward her and his face falls and he groans a little under his breath. "Oh, this is bad. Mindy, you're a doctor, can you make this less bad?"

So instead of responding to Danny's rom-com revelation, what she says is, "You don't need a doctor, you need a time traveler who could go back and get you not to drink a bottle of Jack in one sitting." 

But then she frees her hand and gets up and gets a glass of water (from the tap because she knows the Brita pitcher in the fridge is empty because it's been sitting in the fridge empty for exactly one week less than she's owned it). From where she left him, she hears Danny muttering again, so she pauses, keeps her back to him.

"I think it's like, one of those movies where um, where there's someone you're missing, you know?" Danny's voice is thick and he's slurring a little. "Or-- Mindy?"

"Yes?" Mindy moves to get a blanket from the closet, peeking over her shoulder to watch Danny slide down partially onto his back again, one arm splayed above him, fingers waving a little in the air. "Are you going to be sick?"

"No." A pause. "Problaby. But. You know those movies are stupid, right? Those girls are always kind of stupid, so it's not like you should be looking up to them. You can figure it out." 

Mindy waits, but that seems to be the end of the sentence, so she gets a bottle of Advil and brings all the items she's collected to the couch. She sets the water and the pill bottle on the table and shakes the blanket over Danny, who's now passed out half sitting up against the pillow. His neck is going to be sore in the morning. She pats the blanket where his knee is and turns the light out on her way to bed. She falls asleep to the sound of Danny snoring lightly in the next room and ignoring the nagging thought that if Cliff is really the end of the movie guy, she'd probably want him to meet her dad.


End file.
